Brigade Mod

[McNaughton]

I have finished the named infantry brigades, am just tidying up the named cavalry brigades (both Union and Confederate), and am going to move on to a side mod.

Looking at many orders of battles, with troop strengths, other ACW mods, historic ToE and equipment, I have decided to make a few changes.

--REGIMENT CHANGES--

First, I plan to change the size of the regiments. Official maximum strength was 1000, yet, even in 1861 rarely did numbers get beyond 600 (even at recruitment).

I plan for all infantry and cavalry to have a new strength of 600 men, Militia at 450, and keep Sharpshooters at 250.


--ARTILLERY CHANGES--

I am toying with the idea about having distinctly different Confederate and Union artillery strengths.

Union Artillery batteries tended to be uniform, based on a single type of gun, with a strict number of 6 guns per battery.

Confederate Artillery batteries tended to be mixed (not much I can do here), but, were limited primarily to 4 guns per battery.

I don't know if this is viable, but reducing the power and cost of a Confederate battery by 1/3 (representing having only 2/3 the guns as a comparable Union battery).


--ARTILLERY EQUIPMENT--

Also, equipment wize, the Union tended to use the following guns..
10-lb Parrot (rifled), 12-lb Napoleon (smoothbore), and 3-in Rifled (3-in and 10-lb had similar statistics, except that the 3-in was significantly more reliable)

The ratio for the guns deployed was...
1(10-lb):2(12-lb):2(3-in)

The Union completely eliminated the 6-lb smoothbore from its inventory in the East, and virtually did so in the West (unlike the current AGEOD OOB which has the union heavily equipped with this gun in the East and West).

The Confederates used these following weapons...
6-lb Smoothbore, 10-lb Parrot, 3-in Rilfed (they had only minimal numbers of the 12-lb Napoleon).

The ratio for the guns deployed was...
2(6-lb):1(10-lb):1(3-in)

Half of the deployed weapons were 6-lb guns, half were 10-lb guns (3-in+10-lb), yet as a whole, the Federals deployed more batteries (and more guns per batteries), meaning that the Confederates are not only using older, lighter guns, but have fewer batteries, and their individual batteries are not as large as the Union guns.

Looking at Divisional ToE throughout the war in all theatres,

Union, had (at minimum) an artillery battery per brigade (in most cases, there were more batteries than brigades in a division).

Confederates, had (on average) an artillery battery per 1.5 brigades (in most cases there were not enough batteries to parallel brigades in a division).

When I develop brigades, these brigades will be representative of the artillery situation. Union Brigades will have 1-2 artillery batteries (of 10-lb or 12-lb guns) as integrated forces (representing the lavish artillery of the union), while the Confederates will have only a portion of their infantry brigades with artillery batteries (of 6-lb or 12-lb guns). Presently, I think the Union Artillery is under-rated (fewer batteries attached per brigade, and all using 6-lb guns), while Confederates are able to equip their forces with large numbers (since a high rate of their brigades have attached artillery).

--RENAMED UNITS--

6 lb pounder
12 lb pounder
10 lb Parrott
20 lb Parrott

6-lb smoothbore
12-lb Napoleon
10-lb Parrott
20-lb Parrott

[McNaughton]

--BRIGADES: INFANTRY--

I plan to revamp many of the brigade organizations by changing their composition. Starting off with Infantry. Currently, the largest Union brigade has 3 Regiments of infantry, while Confederates get up to 4 regiments of infantry. At strengths of 1000 men per regiment, this makes sense, but with regiment reduction the number of infnatry regiments should go up.

--INFANTRY REGIMENTS--

With the reduction in troop strength to 600, I plan to increase the number of regiments per brigade.

Brigades tended to be at strengths ranging from 25-3000 men (in some cases as low as 1000, others as high as 5000, but these are rare or after heavy casualties).

UNION: Tended to have strengths of 4 infantry regiments at the beginning of the war (600 x 4 = 2400 men). As the war went on, the number of men remained the same (around 2500), but the number of regiments increased (due to raising regiments vs. providing replacements to existing regiments). So, give the system for all is providing replacements to existing regiments, the Union Infantry ToE will remain pretty consistent at 4 Reigments.

CONFEDERATE: Like the Union, they tended to have brigades of 4 infantry regiments, yet, in many cases this was increased to 5 or even 6 infantry regiments (yielding strengths of men at 3000-3600). Since the Confederates tended to bunch state regiments in the same brigade (out of necessity sometimes they broke this rule), brigades were sometimes smaller (notably the Florida brigades, which tended to be at 3 Regiments, or 1800 men).

[McNaughton]

--BRIGADES: INFANTRY--

--CAVALRY REGIMENTS--

After the initial battles and skirmishes in 1861 and early 1862 Cavalry regiments attached to individual brigades and legions (such as Cobb's Legion) were detached and conglomerated into Cavalry Brigades (for the Confederates, in a Cavalry Corps, for the Union, one or two per Infantry Corps, eventually Hooker creating a Union Cavalry Corps).

Currently, the ToE of an Infantry brigade has significantly high rates of Cavalry, as high, if not higher, than attached artillery. For the Union especially (less so for the Confederacy, who eventually fielded a greater ratio of Cavalry) this results in substantially large numbers of cavalry.

So, instead of having cavalry as a part of infantry brigades, the use of Cavalry brigades will be much greater and much earlier than currently is in place (each side fielded around 20 or so Cavalry Brigades in the war).

This does make variety between Infantry Brigades a little less (since cavalry has been removed from their ToE), but there are other ways to increase brigade diversity to make viable choices in brigade construction vs. just building generic infantry brigade 1 which is no different than generic infantry brigade 5 (AGEOD does a good job making variety of brigades, just using too much cavalry in my opinion).

A Cavalry Brigade will have an average ToE of 3 Regiments of Cavalry, and 1 Regiment of Horse Artillery (usually the numbers of men in Cavalry units kept below 2000).

[McNaughton]

--BRIGADES: INFANTRY--

--INFANTRY--

Looking through individual models, I have found that there are different unit types...

CSA
Early Infantry Regiment 1
Early Infantry Regiment 2
Late Infantry Regiment 1
Late Infantry Regiment 2
Conscript Regiment 1
Conscript Regiment 2
Conscript Regiment 3
Early Zouave Regiment
Late Zouave Regiment
Infantry Skirmish
Light Infantry
Infantry Elite
Early Cavalry
Late Cavlary
Conscript Cavalry

USA
Regular Infantry Regiment
Early Infantry Regiment 1
Early Infantry Regiment 2
Late Infantry Regiment 1
Late Infantry Regiment 2
Conscript Regiment 1
Conscript Regiment 2
Early Zouave Regiment
Late Zouave Regiment
Early Black Infantry Regiment
Late Black Infantry Regiment
Infantry Elite
Light Infantry
Late Mounted Infantry
Early Cavalry
Late Cavalry
Conscript Cavalry


Presently, I am not sure if there should be late war versions of Infantry. I cannot really determine a change of equipment large enough to warrant an increase in firepower to this extent. I pretty much am going to change these late war units and make them exactly like early war units, just resulting in a greater variety of unit graphics players get to see (instead of the few that are currently used).

I toyed with the idea of making late and early brigades, but could not for the life of me find an equipment change so drastic to warrant this (i.e., the use of breech loading rifles).

Currently, AGEOD has it that 'late war' regiments appear in brigades you can equip in 1861, so I don't think that they are really something that is used in a way to represent later war troops (beyond showing later war infantry uniforms used).

In most cases, I find Confederate uniforms to be a bit too tidy and grey, I am going to utilize uniforms that show more butternutt, to represent confederates whose uniforms may not be in the best condition (even though their quality was indeed high).

[McNaughton]

--BRIGADES: INFANTRY--

--COPMOSITION--

On average, as I stated, a brigade will have 4 regiments of infantry.

Attachments to replace or suppliment these 4 regiments are...

1. Artillery (Union: 10-lb or 12-lb, Confederate: 6-lb or 10-lb)
2. Sharpshooters (historicall max 1, yet sometimes 2 in a brigade, limited to NY, PA, IL, MO, MA for Union, NC, LA, SC, TN, AL, MS, GA for Confederates)
3. Zouaves (more limited than before, NY, PA, MO for Union, LA, SC for Confederates) (historicall max 1, yet sometimes 2 in a brigade)
4. Elite (representing regiments such as 'legions')* only for a handful of units such as Cobb's Brigade
5. Trained/Conscript (trained and conscript troops will be in different amounts per brigade to give different unit statistics)

Union Brigades will have more variations of artillery than Confederates (1/3 having 2 batteries). The Confederates will be more infantry heavy (with about 1/2 brigades having no attached artillery at all).

A typical union division will be...
3 Brigades (12 Infantry Regiments, 4 Artillery Batteries, total 16 units, 7800 men)

A typical confederate division will be...
4 Brigades (16 Infantry Regiments, 2 Artillery Batteries, total 18 units, 9900 men)

*Confederate Infantry will primarily be 'trained', but equipped with 6-lb artillery
*Union Infantry will primarily be 'conscript', but equipped with 10/12-lb artillery

I think that these two factors will result in different aspects of strength in Union and Confederate Brigades. The Union has powerful artillery, but poor troops. The Confederates have powerful infantry, but poor artillery.